Wednesday, July 20, 2005
Oracle seem to employ smart people.
No, really. I know if you've engaged a support analyst in fruitless conversations this can occasionally seem hard to believe. Still.
Oh, what you wanted evidence as well? I'm afraid its that HTMLDB team again.not fit, shoelaces, tie. rearrange this into a well known phrase or saying and apply to me.
It so happens that HTMLDB engage a guy called Tyler Muth (this is either a made up name or he is American - who can tell). I've never met him, and likely never will. Anyway first up he contributed a hugely useful comment to Lisa's new oracle newbie blog. Here is what he has to say on learning Oracle
Now if you were following this blog earlier, then you'll know that, rather like many dbas I don't have the highest opinion of OEM there has ever been. (and EM10G needs to get the licensing bug sorted). But not content with the above advice, in the same post, Tyler adds
And finally, I refer you to this post on the HTMLDB forum showing just what can be achieved with cheap hardware and creative use of software features.
4 Comments
Oh, what you wanted evidence as well? I'm afraid its that HTMLDB team again.not fit, shoelaces, tie. rearrange this into a well known phrase or saying and apply to me.
It so happens that HTMLDB engage a guy called Tyler Muth (this is either a made up name or he is American - who can tell). I've never met him, and likely never will. Anyway first up he contributed a hugely useful comment to Lisa's new oracle newbie blog. Here is what he has to say on learning Oracle
VM Ware is sooooo key IMHO. You can create a base Linux or Windows image and save it off. Then install the database into it. If you make a major mistake, no problem, just grab the clean image you created and try again. As you start installing more "stuff", you can really make a mess of your machine. VM Ware contains the mess, makes it portable, and makes it easy to start over.. Now I happen to think, having installed Oracle 8,8i,9 and 10 on various boxes in various semi-competent ways, and then having had to clean up afterwards that that tip is worth the price of entrance alone.
Now if you were following this blog earlier, then you'll know that, rather like many dbas I don't have the highest opinion of OEM there has ever been. (and EM10G needs to get the licensing bug sorted). But not content with the above advice, in the same post, Tyler adds
I'm also a fan of the stand-alone version of Enterprise Manager (pre 10g) as a learning tool. Instead of digging for hours for the solution, do it in EM but press the "Show SQL" button. This way you learn what's going on under the covers. simple, straightforward and rather sneaky thinking in my book.
And finally, I refer you to this post on the HTMLDB forum showing just what can be achieved with cheap hardware and creative use of software features.
Then I turned on the resource manager and put a pretty restrictive policy in place. I believe any query that takes over 10 seconds gets dropped to 1% CPU, anything that takes over 30 min gets killed, anything estimated to take over 2 hours gets killed as soon as it's issued. This one of the most under-utilized db features I know.
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
HTMLDB Training
HTMLDB is in my view one of the coolest technologies ever released by any software company. It beats both 1-2-3 (I guess I'm showing my age) and WordPerfect for delivering real power to end-users and not geeks.
Sergio from the HTMLDB team points out that training for the technology is available. The probably beats reading all the manuals, browsing the forums, reading the HOWTOs and googling. Whichever way you do it, download HTMLDB and start playing.
SimpleProfiler is written using it, but don't let that put you off.
3 Comments
Sergio from the HTMLDB team points out that training for the technology is available. The probably beats reading all the manuals, browsing the forums, reading the HOWTOs and googling. Whichever way you do it, download HTMLDB and start playing.
SimpleProfiler is written using it, but don't let that put you off.
I'm new here, could you help
Duncan Mills posted just the other day about respect amongst experienced members of a technological community. What about respect for people that are just starting to engage with a community - in my case the dba/developer community? Well, I just noticed on Tom Kyte's blog that Lisa Dobson has made public a request for useful information for a presentation that she is doing for the UKOUG Annual Conference in November this year. She's going to look at being a newbie to Oracle, things to do, things not to do, where to go and not get shouted at that sort of thing.
I can't believe that I'm the only one who gets fed up with the hostile reception newbies often get in certain forums and newsgroups. Lisa's initiative is an excellent one and so please do drop her a line if you can help out. you can be sure when the presentation is published I'll be referencing it here.
3 Comments
I can't believe that I'm the only one who gets fed up with the hostile reception newbies often get in certain forums and newsgroups. Lisa's initiative is an excellent one and so please do drop her a line if you can help out. you can be sure when the presentation is published I'll be referencing it here.
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
the petition
site is currently down. as it is a free service I can hardly complain. try again later
0 Comments
I can't let you do that Dave
I was looking at speeding up a particular set of Create Table scripts today. This isn't something I'd normally bother much with - you create the tables once and that is it. However this script may be run repeatedly in development and so the developers wanted me to take a quick look see what you can do?
I fired up EM Console and took a look at the session information dialog, primarily to see how long certain operations were taking via the nice long operations tab. Whilst I was there I took a peek at the SQL tab (to see if the current statement was the one I thought it was). I was greeted with the dialog below
It's that last sentence I have problems with. One of my CREATE TABLE statements takes 25 minutes out of an elapsed time of 31 minutes. I absolutely do want to focus my tuning efforts on that statement. Now I can't use an explain plan, though I can pull the select out of the CTAS and look at that, but saying that I should look at some other process entirely because a particular tuning tool won't work for that statement is just daft.
10 Comments
I fired up EM Console and took a look at the session information dialog, primarily to see how long certain operations were taking via the nice long operations tab. Whilst I was there I took a peek at the SQL tab (to see if the current statement was the one I thought it was). I was greeted with the dialog below
It's that last sentence I have problems with. One of my CREATE TABLE statements takes 25 minutes out of an elapsed time of 31 minutes. I absolutely do want to focus my tuning efforts on that statement. Now I can't use an explain plan, though I can pull the select out of the CTAS and look at that, but saying that I should look at some other process entirely because a particular tuning tool won't work for that statement is just daft.
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
10g Manageability
10g includes some very significant advances in both manageability and diagnosis. Most of these features are exposed both through the Enterprise Manager product and internal PL/SQL APIs.
However, should you be a Standard Edition customer, then these features are largely unavailable to you. In fact, Oracle Database 10g EM removes functionality that was available in 9i to all customers.
I believe this to be wrong. All customers should have the same choice of tools for managing and monitoring their databases and applications servers. In fact, I strongly believe that smaller customers are more likely to require the hand holding and expert system advice that EM offers than large ones. I make my case at slightly longer (3 pages) length here.
As a result I suggest that Oracle Corporation amend its policy on EM packs as follows.
All EM packs should be available to all customers at the same cost
If you are an Oracle customer, or thinking of becoming one, and you agree that all customers should get the ability to effectively manage their Oracle systems regardless of license, then please sign the petition.
7 Comments
However, should you be a Standard Edition customer, then these features are largely unavailable to you. In fact, Oracle Database 10g EM removes functionality that was available in 9i to all customers.
I believe this to be wrong. All customers should have the same choice of tools for managing and monitoring their databases and applications servers. In fact, I strongly believe that smaller customers are more likely to require the hand holding and expert system advice that EM offers than large ones. I make my case at slightly longer (3 pages) length here.
As a result I suggest that Oracle Corporation amend its policy on EM packs as follows.
All EM packs should be available to all customers at the same cost
If you are an Oracle customer, or thinking of becoming one, and you agree that all customers should get the ability to effectively manage their Oracle systems regardless of license, then please sign the petition.
Tuesday, July 05, 2005
a cure for idiocy
so. you added a datafile in the wrong place to the wrong tablespace because you never could type. The cure - just drop it - woops not available.
Till now.
In Arup Nanda's 10gR2 series. drop empty datafiles if you've never done this you'll be thinking, so what. If on the other hand you did this you'll be think whoopeee.
0 Comments
Till now.
In Arup Nanda's 10gR2 series. drop empty datafiles if you've never done this you'll be thinking, so what. If on the other hand you did this you'll be think whoopeee.
10g Release 2
As so often is the case with Danes, Niels Bohr was right
Prediction is difficult, especially if it is about the future.
4 Comments
Prediction is difficult, especially if it is about the future.
Friday, July 01, 2005
HTMLDB Errors
I got a question just the other day regarding problems with HTMLDB. Specifically the questioner had followed a perfectly sensible installation guide, but was getting a 404 error when trying to access HTMLDB. I replied
most likely cause is that the listener isn't running, or that the database isn't registered with the listener. .
This is a great example of how not to answer a technical question.
A better answer would be
1. Check the logs from your application server, these will contain the error message that the application server is encountering.
2. If you are using the companion CD then these logs will be located at $ORACLE_HOME/Apache/apache/logs where $ORACLE_HOME is the home of the Application server that you are running.
3. In my experience though the most likely cause is ......
In other words offering guesses or opinion based on past experience is no substitute for actually offering the information necessary to diagnose the issue. There is a place for offering common experiences, but not at the expense of true troubleshooting. Not my finest hour.
3 Comments
most likely cause is that the listener isn't running, or that the database isn't registered with the listener. .
This is a great example of how not to answer a technical question.
A better answer would be
1. Check the logs from your application server, these will contain the error message that the application server is encountering.
2. If you are using the companion CD then these logs will be located at $ORACLE_HOME/Apache/apache/logs where $ORACLE_HOME is the home of the Application server that you are running.
3. In my experience though the most likely cause is ......
In other words offering guesses or opinion based on past experience is no substitute for actually offering the information necessary to diagnose the issue. There is a place for offering common experiences, but not at the expense of true troubleshooting. Not my finest hour.
